AshleyNolan.co.uk • 2026-04-04 16:10

Easy local device testing

Checking out some alternatives for local device testing.

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AshleyNolan.co.uk • 2026-04-04 16:10

Responsively winging it, together

After returning from Responsive Day out, I felt reflective about the state of RWD.

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AshleyNolan.co.uk • 2026-04-04 16:10

JQuery UK 2013

Making the short trip to Oxford to attend and speak at jQuery UK 2013.

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Why designing in code makes you a better designer
Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

Why designing in code makes you a better designer

I didn’t start out as a designer. I started out as a frontend developer. I cared about the craft and spent a lot of time trying to master HTML, CSS, JavaScript and accessibility. Over time, I learned how these technologies affected UX, so as a dev, I started to suggest design changes to improve usability and accessibility. But most of the designers I worked with ignored my suggestions. Years later...

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Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

Native HTML components don’t guarantee good UX

Last week I read a post by designer and frontend dev, Theodore Soti: Stop clearing forms with JavaScript. The browser already knows how. I still see a lot of apps using custom code to track inputs and reset state. But for many forms, you can just use the native reset button. <form> <!-- ...Your input list... --> <input type="submit" value="Submit"> <inp...

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Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

Design in code, get praise

This week I demoed some flows I’d been redesigning to stakeholders. For context, the programme I’m on is huge. We’re redesigning a highly complex, enterprise-grade, case-working system. There are many feature teams, each with their own product manager. I’ve been on the programme for 6 months but it’s so big I’ve not met many of them. The goal was to show how you can use patterns from the GOV.UK De...

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Can you make toast messages accessible?
Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

Can you make toast messages accessible?

I will answer this question. Let me explain with a post I wrote on LinkedIn last week: Github’s Design System has banned toast messages. Toast messages are little messages that appear on top of the UI to give you feedback about an action you just took. Banning toast messages is an excellent decision because they’re not accessible and have bad UX. Here’s a few reasons why: (1) They disappear autom...

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End with one thing per page
Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

End with one thing per page

Last week, I attended a design crit. One designer shared a multi-step form - here’s what one of the pages looked like: Here’s the last step: Another designer raised a concern that all the change links under “Applicant details” go to the same page. She said: “I’ve seen issues in the past because every change link takes you to a page that has multiple fields. For example, users can get conf...

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Why I don’t test different designs at the same time
Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

Why I don’t test different designs at the same time

A year ago I posted this on LinkedIn: I tell my students to avoid select boxes. Because it’s often better to use radio buttons. But students often say “But it’ll make the page too long”. Yep, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad UX. See the page I designed to let users select a course. Huge list of radio buttons. But no issues in user research whatsoever. Does this mean you should always us...

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“Your” vs “My”: my response to Hacker News comments
Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

“Your” vs “My”: my response to Hacker News comments

Last Tuesday, my article about whether to use “Your” or “My” in user interfaces went viral on Hacker News. In case you don’t know, Hacker News is a site where people discuss and upvote ideas in tech and design. The gist of my article said to use “Your” when communicating to the user, like this: And to use “My” when the user is communicating to us, like this: I read through all the comments...

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“Your” vs “My” in user interfaces
Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

“Your” vs “My” in user interfaces

In season 8, episode 12 of The Simpsons, Bart presses a button on a talking bear display. The bear asks “Only who can prevent forest fires?” Bart presses “You”. The bear replies “You pressed ‘you’ referring to ‘me’ – that is incorrect. The correct answer is you”. The same confusion comes up in digital products and websites. For example, which of these do you think works best: “My account” or ...

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The third law of form design
Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

The third law of form design

In 2008 I worked on a redesign of the checkout flow for Boots.com. We had the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) do an accessibility audit. The consultant found a lot of problems but the main one I remember was with form validation. She said: It’s not clear that there are errors (even though we were showing a big red list of errors at the top of the page) The error messages are disco...

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The second law of form design
Adam Silver • 2026-04-04 16:10

The second law of form design

Last week I shared the first law of form design which is that: Nobody wants to use your form. Like I said last week, it’s crucial to know because it emphasises respecting the user over trying to make your form fun, engaging, novel or “on brand”. And showing respect means doing everything we possibly can to get that form out of the way as quickly as possible. One way to measure how well we’re doing...

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Zach Leatherman • 2026-04-04 16:10

Eleventy is now Build Awesome

The Eleventy project is taking up the Awesome banner. To support the project, please sign up to get notified when our Kickstarter campaign launches!

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State of the Browser 2026
Zach Leatherman • 2026-04-04 16:10

State of the Browser 2026

This is an event post. My individual talk page is here: Get your tickets while they last!

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Zach Leatherman • 2026-04-04 16:10

An Official* Logo for HTML

*Not official. I was working on my slide deck for the upcoming State of the Browser conference and ran into what I would classify as a recurring issue: HTML needs a logo. There isn’t a broadly accepted official logo for (version-independent) HTML. There is a logo for HTML 5, but that versioned marketing term has long fallen out of regular use (and was introduced 18 years ago). This is a community ...

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Zach Leatherman • 2026-04-04 16:10

How Eleventy Survived: Funding, Growth, and Open Source Reality

Eleventy started as a side project. Now it’s a critical infrastructure for thousands of websites. TL;DR: Open source isn’t broken. But the way we fund it often is. Let’s talk about what actually works. In this episode, we sit down with Zach Leatherman, creator of Eleventy (11ty), to talk honestly about what happens after open source succeeds. From nap-time coding and nights-and-weekends maintenan...

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Zach Leatherman • 2026-04-04 16:10

Eleventy, 2025 in Review

A look back at the 2025 highlights for the 11ty org and the Eleventy project! It was another huge year for 11ty. We shipped 177 releases (73% more than 2024) across the full 11ty/* suite. We closed 804 issues (15% more than 2024). We reduced core’s dependency count by 28% and weight by 22%. More folks are building with Eleventy than ever: our year-over-year npm downloads (for only core) are up by...

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Zach Leatherman • 2026-04-04 16:10

No more tokens! Locking down npm Publish Workflows

With the recent spate of high profile npm security incidents involving compromised deployment workflows, I decided that it would be prudent to do a full inventory of my npm security footprint (especially for 11ty). Just in the last few months: November 2025: Shai Halud v2 (PostHog) (and PostHog post-mortem): Worm infected ×834 packages. Propagated via preinstall npm script. September 2025 Shai H...

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Zach Leatherman • 2026-04-04 16:10

How to Hallucinate using Web Components

Say, you want the smooth convenience of consuming content that feels like it’s generated in real time without having to deal with the tradeoffs of a Large Language Model née Artificial Intelligence. Why not use animation? It’s the perfect metaphor for a Hollywood-esque veneer of complexity without substance, in no way similar to how an entire industry is currently being oversold and at no risk of ...

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